Welcome to WVnature.com

Hi! My name is Debbie Norman. I love God, my family, my country, my beautiful home state of West Virginia, reading, art, nature and photography. I have a physical disability but it does not have me. This is my nature journal of the world around me.

To avoid any possible confusion, please do not think that the “official” name of this type of spider is “woolly spider”. It’s not. Or it could be for all I know. LOL That’s just what I call them, “woolly little jumping spiders”.

I am not fond of spiders, but …. if I find one interesting while out with my camera, I will sometimes take it’s photo. This little fella kept sitting on the side of our gutter, defying gravity, and hopping back and forth until finally I gave in and photographed him. If you are squeamish like me in regards to spiders, I apologize in advance.

This little guy (or gal) was about the size of a dime. Notice it’s creepy little spider shadow. eeewww

Ok, sorry in advance for the crummy photo quality. But this was a very small spider, suspended over some of my hostas, in blowing wind. So this is heavily cropped and is the best I could do. And if you read here often you know I’m not terribly fond of spiders but I thought that the spot on it that nearly glowed was interesting, as was whatever it has near it’s head that gives an appearance of a creepy clown smile. LOL! So I just had to throw it in here.

I believe I’ve mentioned on here before that I am not terribly fond of photographing spiders, as they kinda give me the creeps. But occasionally one will interest me. I was looking at the newest crocus blooms today and saw this little one on one of the blooms.

~

a closer look:

~

What happened next is kinda funny (now). I moved my camera to take photos of some other crocus blooms beside of this one. (I’ll probably post a couple of those next.) But while doing that, I had the camera extremely close to the bloom this spider was on. When I raised the camera, the spider was gone. The last time I looked at him he was taking one of those stances like they do when threatened. So upon noticing that he was missing I went into a search of my camera, hoping he hadn’t jumped or crawled onto it when I had it too close to him. I didn’t see him on my camera at all. But was still wondering where he had went to, when finally I spotted him.

He had been hiding on the underside of the crocus bloom the entire time.

I noticed a tiny spider on the side of our vehicle. I don’t take a lot of spider photos. As I have mentioned before, I find spiders fairly creepy. But I was amazed at what I saw when I looked at this photo.

Here is what my eye saw as I walked past our vehicle:

Nothing particularly special there, right? But I noticed the spider’s reaction to me. He turned and did that aggressive stance at me as I got nearby. I don’t know what type of spider these are, but I have seen them before, and they almost always do that if you get near them.

Here’s what I found sort of amazing:

Do you see what I see? A face. Yeah, I’ve seen close ups of spiders before. But I really thought this one was quite interesting. Also notice the tiny little string of web that is attached to it’s back leg, helping it hold onto the vehicle. To give you an idea of scale, this entire spider was small enough to fit on a dime, easily.

~

One last “face” photo, then we’re done with spiders for the day… I promise. 🙂

Ok admittedly spiders give me the creeps, so you don’t see them too often here. But occasionally I do photograph them. This post is a combination of photos from two different dates. On September 23rd, 2009 I saw this little nest tucked into the side of the brick. I assumed it was a nest for spider babies, because that’s what it looked like to me. But I wasn’t 100% certain at the time. I decided to photograph it and then look in on it from time to time. I figured I would probably never catch the babies on film, but I thought it might be worth a try.

This is what I saw in September:

~

I would take a peek at it from time to time, just to see if it was still there. And today (November 8th, 2009) I saw this. A nest full of little black baby spiders. They are so tiny it didn’t really give me the creeps too bad. LOL!

~

Here’s a close up:

Ok, they are a little creepy on close up. LOL
I could have gotten better macro shots but I was doing some serious stretching and balancing to get this shot, since they are somewhat blocked by big English boxwoods. So this was the best I could do, given the location. Still I thought it was pretty cool that I happened by at just the right time to catch a photo of them. I went back out a couple of hours later and they were all gone.

The mud dauber vs. spider post got lots of traffic yesterday. So I was a little surprised that there weren’t more guesses as to who won. The winner in the conflict that I photographed and video taped below, was actually the spider! A little surprising considering they are the prey of the mud dauber. But it’s true. The spider put up a good fight and he won. At least twice I saw him bite the mud dauber and the mud dauber jumped back like it hurt him. Once he actually flew off for a few minutes, then came back and attacked the spider again. But the last time the spider got him, he left. And I did not see him come back. As you can see below the spider was looking pretty worse for the wear though.

I wondered if maybe the spider was paralyzed by the mud dauber and the mud dauber was just going to come back for it later or something, since the spider looked so rough. But I continued to see the spider for a couple more days, and it was moving about out there and stuff. And even looked better the next day. So I guess he made it. I thought it was impressive how hard the mud dauber was willing to work for his food, and how hard the spider fought. I know I only took a few short video clips, but their “battle” actually went on for quite a long time. Probably at least 20 minutes or longer.